1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a noise reduction apparatus having an edge enhancement function and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a noise reduction apparatus having an edge enhancement function and a method thereof, in which edges in an input image can be prevented from being blurred when reducing noise in the input image and a clear output image can be obtained by reducing edge discontinuities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional noise reduction methods generally have low-pass filtering characteristics and are likely to damage original image data. In order to address this problem, methods have been suggested in which only portions of an original image which do not have any edges are processed while leaving other portions having edges unprocessed. However, there is a drawback in that these methods do not correct edge defects such as edge discontinuities.
Therefore, a noise reduction technique, which is capable of generating a clear image by reducing edge discontinuities that may result from noise reduction, is needed.